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A former top aide to Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano used the 5th Amendment privilege so he didn’t have to answer questions about his political work for Ficano in a civil deposition.

That deposition and others were revealed in court documents today tied to a lawsuit filed by James Wallace, a former graphic artist for the county who claimed he was fired because he refused to do Ficano’s political work on county time.

Former assistant executive Nader Fakhouri, 44, of Troy acknowledged working for Ficano’s political machine, but he was advised by a criminal lawyer not to answer some questions in a civil deposition because he could risk incriminating himself.

Keith Corbett, a criminal defense lawyer who formerly oversaw organized-crime prosecutions for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said at the Dec. 6 deposition that he and his law partner, Walter Kozar, represented Fakhouri “in a matter involving a federal criminal investigation.”

“The government has advised us that Mr. Fakhouri is not the target of the investigation at this point in time,” Corbett said today, noting that investigators have been known to change their minds.

A federal grand jury has been investigating corruption in Wayne County government for more than a year. If federal agents are investigating Ficano’s campaign operations, it would mark the closest they have come to Ficano, who has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Ficano has said he’s cooperating with the investigation, and any wrongdoing was the result of rogue underlings in a large organization.

The case already has resulted in three guilty pleas.

Fakhouri didn’t answer questions about more than $400,000 that Ficano’s campaign paid to QTI, a company run by Fakhouri’s sister, Najwa Fakhouri. He wouldn’t say whether he approved the payments, whether he received any of that money or whether he informed the IRS of his payments to his sister.

At another point in the deposition, Corbett stopped him from answering questions about e-mails sent regarding campaign donation targets for county vendors.

“It is pending litigation, so we can’t comment on that,” Ficano spokeswoman June West said.

Wallace’s lawyer, Deborah Gordon, tried to get Fakhouri to discuss the political work done by county staffers on county time. She filed his deposition as part of a motion asking Judge Bernard Friedman to order Ficano to answer questions under oath about Wallace’s case.

Attorneys for the county have tried to avoid having Ficano questioned under oath in the case, saying he wasn’t directly involved in Wallace's work. But Gordon wrote in a motion that Ficano was well-aware that people who worked on the 31st floor of the Guardian Building knew of the political work being done there.

“Defendants’ suggestion that Ficano had no knowledge of what was going on at the county, on county time, on the same floor as his office, is absurd,” Gordon wrote.